Guidance on Education

TESTS, PROMOTIONS, PRIZES

About Tests

Tests may be useful in giving you the academic worth of a Child, but not his real worth.

As for the real worth of a child, something else is to be found, but that will be for later on, and will be of a different nature.

I am not opposing real worth to academic worth; they can coexist in the same individual, but it is a rather rare phenomenon which produces exceptional types of people.

1962

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It is not by conventional examinations that students can be selected for a class. It is only by developing in oneself the true psychological sense.

Select children who want to learn, not those who want to push themselves forward.

29 October 1965

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(About cheating in tests)

What should I do? Must we do what is done outside  put three teachers in a room to invigilate? The teachers do not like doing things in this way here in the Ashram.

Or should we abolish tests? I find this proposal doubtful, since the same thing happens with home work and essays.

In any case the problem exists, and in order to

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find the real solution we should understand why the children behave like this.

Please tell me the cause of this misbehaviour and the solution to this problem.

It is very simple. It is because most of the children study because they are compelled to do so by their families, by custom and prevalent ideas, and not because they want to learn and know. As long as their motive for studying is not rectified, as long as they do not work because they want to know, they will find all kinds of tricks to make their work easier and to obtain results with a minimum of effort.

June 1967

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(The Mother said that repetition of the followingstatement a hundred or a thousand times a day, until it became a living vibration, would help the student to instil in himself the right will and motive for studying.)

To be repeated each day by all the students:

It is not for our family, it is not to secure a good position, it is not to earn money, it is not to obtain a diploma, that we study.

We study to learn, to know, to understand the world, and for the sake of the joy that it gives us.

June 1967

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The only solution is to annul this test and all that are to come. Keep all the papers with you in a closed bundle  as something that has not been and continue

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quietly your Classes.

At the end of the year you will give notes to the students, not based on written test-papers, but on their behaviour, their concentration, their regularity, their promptness to understand and their openness of intelligence.

For yourself you will take it as a discipline to rely more on inner contact, keen observation, and impartial outlook.

For the students it will be the necessity of understanding truly what they learn and not to repeat as a parrot what they have not fully understood.

And thus a true progress will have been made in the teaching.

With blessings.

21 July 1967

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I find tests an obsolete and ineffective way of knowing if the students are intelligent, willing and attentive.

A silly, mechanical mind can very well answer a test if the memory is good and these are certainly not the qualities required for a man of the future.

It is by tolerance for the old habits that I consented that those who want tests can have them. But I hope that in future this concession will not be necessary.

To know if a student is good needs, if the tests are abolished, a little more inner contact and psychological knowledge for the teacher. But our teachers are expected to do Yoga, so this ought not to be difficult for them.

22 July 1967

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Mother,

I have seen your messages about tests. I fully agree that examinations are useless. Personally I have some questions. I teach a language, Hindi. I have to see whether my students have a grasp over the language. In one of my classes I have replaced tests by essays. The result is satisfactory. But what to do in such cases:

1. X  She has a good grasp of Hindi, but she is very careless, does not work and is often absent.

2. Y Very intelligent and capable, but she always shirked from work and tried to cheat me by her sweet and intelligent talk. I had to give up.

3. Z Very much interested, she can appreciate literature, but she cannot write one sentence correctly.

There are others in the same category in various degrees in the lower classes.

Those who are insincere do not truly want to learn but to get good marks or compliments from the teacher they are not interesting.

Is it possible for a teacher to know by his inner contact whether the student knows the language well and he can be promoted? W was wonderful in my class for ten days in a year; on the rest of the days she was just a listener. I always promoted her on the basis of the possibility based on those ten days.

It is all right.

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Naturally the teacher has to test the student to know if he or she has learnt something and has made a progress. But this test must be individual and adapted to each student, not the same mechanical test for all of them. It must be a spontaneous and unexpected test leaving no room for pretence and insincerity. Naturally also, this is much more difficult for the teacher, but so much more living and interesting also.

Blessings.

25 July 1967

Mother,

I seek your guidance about promotion in the classes.

X is very weak and irregular. If she wants she can do well, and since Y's birthday celebration she has become more intelligent. She was a star there.

Intelligence and capacity of understanding are surely more important than regularity in work. Steadiness may be acquired later.

5 October 1967

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Mother,

My newly trained teachers, X, Y and Z, are trying to do their work properly but I find their classes lack life. They are dull. The whole class seems to be asleep. How to bring life into their work?

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In the playground activities we have competitions and prizes. In the school they have been abolished.

The prizes belong to a rather low standard of life but if we are still there...

Do it, if you find it necessary.

29 May 1968

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Sweet Mother,

Is it good to give prizes to the children or reward them in order to make them work or to create some sort of interest?

It is obvious that for the children it is better to study in order to develop their consciousness and learn a little of all they do not know; but to give prizes to those who have been particularly studious, disciplined and attentive, is not bad.

17 December 1969

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What should he the criteria for giving prizes in our "Free Progress Classes"?

The prizes certainly should not be based on competitive grades.

A prize of appreciation, of equivalent value, could be given to those who have exceeded a certain level of (1) capacity, plus (2) goodwill and regularity of effort.

Both should be there to warrant the prize.

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